


reaching out, reaching in

by oceanknives



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, This is about seeing hands and wanting to hold them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26695126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceanknives/pseuds/oceanknives
Summary: Volleyball is many things - it is also a sport about hands.Tsukishima and Yamaguchi find themselves staring.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 84





	reaching out, reaching in

**Author's Note:**

> In a surprising turn of events, Haikyuu has gripped my heart again after so many years, and I find myself writing about it. Huh.  
> This features my friend Joey's (hi Joey <3) headcanon that Yamaguchi knits, which as a concept is extremely good for the soul, and had to be included in my ramblings about hands.  
> Hope you enjoy!

It started tucked inside pockets and digging in gravel.

Tsukishima Kei did not really know what to do with his hands, most of the time. They were quite big for his age, like the rest of him, and they seemed to fit awkwardly in the world around him. He picked at them, wondering if they would get smaller if he buffed them down enough. They seemed too empty, most of the time, so he tried to put them away. Hence, pockets.

Yamaguchi Tadashi did not think about his hands much, except when they hurt, which they did too often. He fell a lot, and his hands were awfully reliable when it came to meeting the floor. Gravel dug into his skin like it belonged there, finding the only day old grooves to settle into, and made Yamaguchi's palms raw and painful. He had stopped wincing a while ago. Still, he couldn't forget about it.

It started tucked inside pockets and digging in gravel, and, slowly, it grew closer.

* * *

Tsukishima's hands were good teachers. Carefully, they shifted Yamaguchi's forearms into a better receive position. Carefully, they wrote kanji on lined paper. Carefully, they came out of their pockets.

Yamaguchi felt himself want to reach out towards them - to connect, like they said at the gym. Something inside him cried that those hands were special, and that he should hold them gently, like one would a miracle.

He didn't, because young boys do not hold other boys' hands.

But God, he wanted to.

* * *

Hand gripping a forearm. Hand ruffling hair. Hand pulling forward. Hand resisting.

There were hands and they belonged to bodies and everything fell into a routine. Comfortable. Reaching. Scared to grasp anything.

Still, hoping.

* * *

Tsukishima caught himself staring.

Yamaguchi liked knitting, and there had been countless afternoons lulled by the clicking of needles and the subtle smell of yarn. Tsukishima should have been used to it, by now - and yet. He still found himself looking at Yamaguchi's hands, deftly intertwining the strands in learned motions. He still found himself looking at the way Yamaguchi would take breaks to massage his fingers, one by one, "helps prevent carpal tunnel," he said, methodical and precise. Tsukishima sometimes let himself imagine that he, too, could hold Yamaguchi's hands, and help ensure they would remain eternal.

Tsukishima caught himself staring, and no one was there to blame him.

* * *

Tsukishima had always had cold hands. It was just another fact about him. Fitting, some people said, for such an icy boy. He didn't care, not really. Or, at least, didn't use to. Until one day, Yamaguchi grabbed his hand - coincidence, of course, imprudence, wrong movement - and remarked on it like it was something terrible and heart breaking.

"Oh, Tsukki, your hands are so cold! Hold on-"

There was something Tsukishima could not make sense of in the image of Yamaguchi blowing hot air on his hands to warm them up. It had to be wrong, surely, this was - the breaking of barriers, the realisation of something unspoken, and yet - the feeling on his skin was proof enough. 

"I- Yamaguchi, it's fine, I don't mind."

"But I do," the other replied absentmindedly, brows furrowed with focus.

A few days later, Tsukishima owned a pair of warm, hand-knitted gloves. He wore them every winter.

* * *

Yamaguchi's hands were gripping Tsukishima's shirt.

Gentle, healing hands, now jolting his awkward limbs awake, pushing him into action, somehow. Breathing life into him.

There were his words, of course - but something about the crinkles in his shirt once Yamaguchi let go of him (like he'd been burned, he thought, and that was painful) lingered in his mind. He still felt the tension in the fabric, the warmth of Yamaguchi's skin getting through, the pull of the stitches on his back.

He still felt Yamaguchi's touch on him.

The routine shifted.

* * *

Yamaguchi caught himself staring.

The way Tsukishima's arms rose in the air in strong, immovable lines. The way his eyes darted around the court behind the panes of glass protecting them. The way his hands cast shadows under the bright neon lights of the gym, fingers reaching higher, touching, always touching. Whatever the cost. The way those same fingers hid under bandages long after practice had ended.

Yamaguchi caught himself staring, and, well, no one blamed him. Volleyball is a sport where you're always looking up, and Tsukishima just happened to be tall.

* * *

The freckles on Yamaguchi's hands were dangerous, Tsukishima thought.

There was something deep within him that wanted to trace them, delicately, following them up a forearm and a shoulder and a neck and a face. He imagined what road they would create, what path would be there for him to learn.

He tried to tell himself that they were just concentrated spots of melanin. Still, a terrible voice at the back of his head replied that if he was the moon, the stars were on Yamaguchi's skin

* * *

Yamaguchi could not help but look as Tsukishima wrapped bandages around his fingers. Fingers seemed so delicate, bone barely wrapped in skin, and yet, Tsukishima still threw his to the metaphorical wolves. There was something awful about it, the way he put his eyes behind glass and his hands in front of bullets, and did not waver.

But as defiant as he was, he was still only human, and bodies are fragile things.

He was struggling to get the bandages keeping his ring and middle finger together to hold, and Yamaguchi reacted on instinct.

"Here, let me help," he said, simply grasping the hands in front of him. Easy.

The air seemed to shift, like the space between atoms had suddenly become charged with something new.

Yamaguchi's fingers deftly made the bandages hold in place.

"I can do it myself, you know," said Tsukishima, quietly, like speaking loudly would break whatever permeated the air.

Yamaguchi was still holding his hand.

"Yeah, but you don't have to," came his reply.

The words were so evident. A fundamental truth of life.

Tsukishima's breath failed him.

* * *

"NO TOUCH ACE!"

Tsukishima's hands collided with Yamaguchi's, and for a beat, it felt like they would remain like this forever. In the exhilaration of victory, adrenaline in his veins, Yamaguchi saw Tsukishima's hands meet his, and all he wanted to do was to make them his own, to meld them to himself, somehow, to keep them on him no matter what.

The moment ended in half a second, and Yamaguchi was left with a shortness of breath and an old, familiar sting in his palms.

Oh, this was not the time to think about his hands.

The claps on his back jolted him awake.

* * *

Hands, mountains, moments - all culminate. There is a climb and a peak and a slope. Sometimes, the climb is so long that the peak comes as a surprise.

Maybe this is why Tsukishima did not realise Yamaguchi had kissed him until after it had happened, and the other boy's hands were on his face, and there was a look in his eyes that spoke of awe and worry and maybe even love, if one believed a single look could carry this much.

He felt more than made his hands reach up to frame Yamaguchi's face, so perfectly, so obviously, and the smile that broke out on his face eclipsed the sun.

* * *

The routine did not change, in a way. There were still hands and they still belonged to bodies and they still fell into the same routine.

But now, fear was a foreign concept, and reaching was only ever the end of a movement, not the beginning of one.

And, always - hoping. Hoping that this was the routine that stuck.

* * *

Yamaguchi was knitting a jumper - or, well, he thought he was, because suddenly the needles were getting pried out of his hands, and Tsukishima's face appeared in his peripheral vision.

"It's been 40 minutes since your last break."

"Kei - please, it's fine, I was about to take one, I just wanted to finish my row-"

"And I want you not to get carpal tunnel," replied Tsukishima, still attempting to get Yamaguchi's hands to open.

Yamaguchi laughed, and relinquished the knitting needles.

"God. You're so… I know I have to massage my hands, Tsukki. I can do it myself."

"Yes, but you don't have to."

The answer was quiet, and yet, it was all Yamaguchi heard. He noticed Tsukishima's small, private smile, and felt a much bigger one bloom on his lips. He burrowed his face into the other's neck, and mumbled against his shoulder :

"You. You. I love you so much."

"I love you too," came the reply, evident, fundamental truth of life, as Tsukishima kept carefully massaging Yamaguchi's fingers.

* * *

It ended - or, well, continued, persevered, lived on - grasping one another. With fingers interlocked in the matching glint of rings and a comforting feeling, one of home and stability and evidence.

Tsukishima Kei knew what to do with his hands, and they had not been empty in a very, very long time.

Yamaguchi Tadashi had not thought about his hands in years. He had someone to care for them - someone who would do so for a very, very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I discussed the idea of tskym getting married and whether or not they would take each other's names, and my friend Lauryn (hi Lauryn <3) suggested that they hyphenated. I nodded and then proceeded not to write the hyphenated names in my fic for some reason. They are very much married in the end though.


End file.
